Wheat and Chaff

Today I finished the threshing of my wheat. I keep trying to find ways to help along an essentially manual process (I'm far too small for any kind of machinery, and you would think they would make some kind of hand combine for small batches - in that case, you'd be wrong). This time, I took the remainder, threshed it all, then hand dropped it into the bucket to get rid of the worst of the chaff, followed rinsing it. It is now drying in the hot summer sun.

In doing the wheat, as with every year, I am again struck by the image of wheat as used by Christ. Most people, I think, don't really understand what chaff is as it relates to our spiritual lives. We have the idea that it a weighty thing, something that will have some kind of significance in eternity, that will carry some kind of merit. The fact is, chaff is light and blows away easily. Those who process the grain purposely seek to get rid of the stuff. It is only the weighty grain, which falls back into the bucket or on the ground, that has any value to the farmer.

In Psalm 1:4, God compares the way of the wicked to "Chaff which blows away" - which is a good remainder to all of us what our lives are in comparison to God without Christ - little bits of dead plant matter which will whirl away in the first zephyr breeze of the Last Trumpet.